poppin' kernels

[Kathleenmlk]

What is a kernel? The only kind I know is corn. Would Windows be a kernel, or Apple's operating system?

 

[lunatic59]

Windows wouldn't *be* a kernel, but it has one. Same thing with Apple,s OS. At the simplest level the kernel is that bit of software that controls the hardware directly. It talks to the memory, CPU, display adapter and any other hardware it has access to. It is the central core of any operation system.

KERNEL


^^^^ See that? When I typed that, the keyboard sent little electrical impulses into a serial port on the back of my PC and the kernel, ever-present and ever-listening grabbed them and directed them to the shell, or outer layer of the operating system which, in my case is Windows 10. My operating system then took the impulses from the kernel and through a bunch of processes (drivers, applications, settings, libraries, fonts, etc.) interpreted them into the signals required to display on my monitor as what you see. It then sent the reinterpreted bits and passed it back to the kernel, who know sends it to the GPU to turn into the electrical impulses necessary to make it show up on my monitor.

Of course that's a pretty simplified description, but it's good enough for Jeopardy.

 

[Kathleenmlk]

Ok, I guess that explains it. Is there any way to get one kernel working with another, for instance Linux (Android) and Windows 10? I would like to be able to use a computer (most likely with Windows) with an Android phone to back up things and make the phone run better. Incidentally, is there a way to prevent apps from running when they're not actually needed? I think that would help make a phone run better, especially if it's got too little ram.

 

[lunatic59]

I'm not sure I understand the question. While they are completely different operating systems, Windows and Linux do play nice in the same environment. As for backing up your phone or moving files off, you have several options. The most basic is to simply take the USB cable and plug the phone into the PC. If you have a newer phone you may have to pull down the notification bar to enable MTP mode (Media Transfer Protocol) but then you just copy and move the files like the phone was a flash drive.

You could do it via WiFi, too with an app like Airdroid. In this case the app sets up the phone as a secure file server and you log into it using the browser on a PC.

Finally there's the cloud. Google Drive, Drop Box, OneDrive (MS) are all places where you can keep your files and have them available wherever you are.

I think that would help make a phone run better, especially if it's got too little ram.

No it won't. Android follows the Linux paradigm that unused memory is wasted memory. It will manage your memory for you so killing off apps to free RAM is a non-starter. If you've got performance issues, we can address those, but it would be helpful to know your phone and Android version.

 

[Rgarner]

I agree with the popper. I'm using a ZTE Z815 which has only 8 gb and 1 for ram. Even though I put all the photos and videos on SD at 32 gb, the phone's performance is incredibly bad. I have to clear the data cache about every 5 minutes, but it's often as low as maybe 2 or less. I've deleted just about everything I can. It's a frustrating piece of junk. I am contacting you with Firefox Focus because I couldn't get the real one to work and had to delete it, again. Please help.

 

[lunatic59]

I'm using a ZTE Z815

It's a frustrating piece of junk.

I'm not sure what I can tell you. The ZTE Fanfare is a low end phone and performs accordingly. You could try and optimize it by clearing caches (don't use any of those phone optimizers. ESPECIALLY on resource-starved phones, this will make things worse) or uninstalling apps, but frankly the best advice I can give you is to start thinking about a better phone, and accept this one for what it is.

 

[svim]

You have a low-spec phone, so with only 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage you simply have to keep your expectations in accordance with what your phone is capable of. Stop frustrating yourself by thinking there's a magic fix for this. Even if you root it, pare it down to an absolute minimum of functionality to improve its general performance, at that point you'll have a smartphone that can't do much more than a typical feature, flip-phone.